While netbooks & nettops have been pouring into homes around the country, many netbook users have been craving a bit more power.  Nvidia has promised this power bump with few comprises in their new ION platform which couples the ubiquitous Atom processor with a 9400M GPU instead of the standard integrated solution.  This spring many saw demos of the added power ION brought to the table and the anticipation for real products grew.

Lenovo announced what would be the first ION netbook the IdeaPad S12, with promises of pre-orders in June and deliveries in July.  Unfortunately when those promises became reality, Lenovo admitted it had fibbed a bit.  While you can now buy a S12 - if you want an S12 with ION (the whole reason to buy the S12) you would have to wait until September-October. Marketing students will now ponder what Lenovo hoped to accomplish with such a deception…

Enter Gateway’s LT3103. Launched seemingly in response to the Lenovo bait and switch - another 12″, full keyboard, netbook with a better GPU just after the IrONic truth came to light.  The company couldn’t have timed it any better if it was staged, but will this gift of circumstances translate into gang-buster sales?  My guess is no.  Sadly, Gateway completely missed the boat and provided customers with the opposite of what they wanted: instead of more power the gave less. Let me explain:

The LT3103 uses a AMD Athlon 64 L110 Single-Core Processor - which from what I can tell is an old Athlon 64 2800+ chip underclocked by a third. Now while Athlon is a more powerful CPU than the Atom, the power drain of the old CPU led Gateway to lower the clock speed significantly.  Still the Athlon running at 1.3Ghz should be on par with the Atom at 1.6Ghz.  Unfortunately, Gateway set the chip to 1.2Ghz.  Strike 1.

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Medicare is currently costing the US almost $500,000,000,000 per year (and growing) which equates to 5.77% of EVERYONE’S paycheck.  Unfortunately we are currently only taxing 2.9% of everyone’s check so we have a $180B shortfall.  Which is currently being picked up by the general budget and some past overages.  Once the overages run dry, it will become difficult for the general fund to cover the entire difference.  But I digress.

Medicare currently covers around 40M people or 13% of Americans.  Now I think most people will agree that the medical coverage of medicare is mediocre at best but it allows for a reasonable comparison of the costs of baseline (borderline) coverage.  So we do the math and:

EveryoneCare would cost Everyone’s Paycheck 44%!!! - and I mean EVERYONE just like Medicare taxes the Fry Cook along with the Wall Street Banker.  So can we really afford universal health care?

Of course, these numbers assume that the burden is shared equally like Medicare.  If you imposed a “progressive” structure that omitted or reduced the burden on anyone it would result in an even higher numbers for those still footing the bill.  And remember that this is ONLY the cost of Medicare expanded to everyone.  This would be in addition to your current taxes and what not that come out of your check.  It also doesn’t include any increases related to providing care that is better than the admittedly mediocre Medicare.  It also omits any additional expenses in expanding the current systems bureaucracy tenfold. Read more

You may have never thought about this, or you may think that it’s impossible to determine the most important word ever spoken. To the contrary, it is quite obvious, once I make you aware. I am referring to the single most important word ever uttered in the history of the planet! The answer is: “tetelestai”. If you think this looks like Greek, you’re right. But most historians & scholars agree that this is the language that was most likely spoken at this time & for this particular event - the most important word. And since it is absolutely that, I believe it is valuable to be able to say it, just as it was spoken. It is pronounced “teh-tel-eh-stye”. Go ahead say it. “tetelestai”. Good, don’t you love the sound of it? You will.So what does it mean? The translation can vary slightly (another reason to know the original word, so you get it exact), but is usually rendered “It is finished”, or “It has been finished” (Jn 19:30). This word was the 6th of 7 statements made by Christ on the cross. So now what does this mean? To fully appreciate it, we must first understand what was happening during this crucial time in history.

The cross of Christ is the central event of the entire universe. Everyone before it, looked forward to it, and everyone after looks back. Christ was on the cross for 6 hours (9 to 3). During the first 3 hours He took abuse from men, the jeering & mocking, etc (Mt 27:39-44). The second 3 hours He took abuse from God Himself (Mt 27:46, Is 53:4-6). This is why the sky turned dark (Mt 27:45). It was between the Father & the Son alone, too personal, too sacred for anyone else to watch. It was during this time that Christ was actually being pushed into hell to suffer the wrath of a holy God on our behalf (Rom 1:18, 1Pe 2:24). We are incapable of understanding the shock, torment, and loneliness of such an experience, especially for One who had never sinned or been separated from the Father (2Cor 5:21). But it must be so to satisfy God’s justice, the payment for sin must be made. So somehow, again beyond comprehension, in a finite amount of time, Jesus endured an infinite amount of suffering & wrath. He literally became sin for us (2Cor 5:21).

Just before 3:00 Jesus states, “I thirst” (Jn 19:28). Previously He refused anything that might reduce His suffering (Mt 27:34), but now He asks for it. Why? He was about to utter “tetelestai”. To declare to the world & all of history that the most significant accomplishment of all time had been finished (Jn 19:28). The perfect sacrifice had been made. The sinless one paid the price for all us sinners (1Pe 3:18). God’s wrath had been satisfied, and His holiness maintained (1Jn 2:2, Hab 1:13, Rom 3:21-26). To make this declaration, Jesus needed to moisten His parched mouth & throat so that He could speak loud & clear for all of us to hear, that wonderful truth of His finished work. In Mt 27:50 it says “He cried out in a loud voice.” That loud voice was “tetelestai”!! His work on earth had been finished. “tetelestai”! Truly, this was and is the most important word ever spoken. Amen?

- Daniel Kuban (5/25/09)

AMD announced today that they have a chip that will compete with the Atom chip dominating the netbook landscape… starting in 2011.  Which begs the question - will netbooks even exist in 2 yrs or will they be swallowed up as low end notebooks.

I see the netbook category still around in 2 yrs but much smaller -niche wise not size wise- than today.

Between ION, dual core atoms, and more the current NETbook goes from handling 90% of the typical consumer load to 99% and thus becomes a not-over-priced-ultra-portable or notebook.

However the net only (ok mostly) concept is sound especially with more and more cloud type services coming online (could resist).  With the first ION net-er-notebooks about to launch at $500 it’s safe to say they could run $300 in 2 yrs.  Which shows that price differentiation is going to be less important in the future - at some point you hit the bottom (keyboards, trackpads and such all cost SOMEthing to make).  Which leaves weight and battery life.  So the netbooks of the future will be $200ish, weigh less than two pounds, have a real world battery life of 12 hours (claimed 15-18), and have just enough power to play hulu (which by then will be accelerated).  OK maybe that’s 3 years out ;)

The boys of Engadget put together a great column on all that Tivo has hasn’t accomplished.  If you own a Tivo you will find yourself not only nodding but laughing with thier assessment of the situation:

 We’ll be totally honest here: we love TiVo. TiVo DVRs of every vintage are scattered throughout the Engadget editorial ranks, and Series3 units are our preferred hardware for HD Netflix streaming and Amazon’s nascent HD Video on Demand service. And, well, using a TiVo is just fun in a way that no other DVR ever is — those booping noises still provoke smiles all around.

But here’s the thing: it’s been ten years since TiVo first introduced the Philips-built HDR110 at NAB, and while the company’s name has since become synonymous with time-shifted digital video recording, it’s not because its products have achieved runaway success. In fact, it’s the exact opposite: most consumers choose to get by with awful cable- or satellite-company DVRs, and TiVo’s only just barely pulled a full year of profitability, two factors that have kept it firmly on deathwatch since 2005. Not only that, but while TiVo might have pushed the DVR into the mainstream, it hasn’t meaningfully innovated since — apart from HD output and the aforementioned streaming services, you’d be hard-pressed to tell a brand-new TiVo HD from an original unit by using it for five minutes…

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So I got my credit report the other day to check my FICO score and such and discovered a (small) error on it.  No big deal, I’ve disputed stuff before - pretty painless.  Well this time it was -uh- a little less smooth process…

1. Dispute the error.  Equifax has a web site just for this (https://www.ai.equifax.com/CreditInvestigation/jsp/ECC_Welcome_User.jsp).  Fill out some info and search around a bit to figure out how to dispute the negative info (why it doesn’t default to that section of the report I’ll never know) but not too bad.
2. Get email saying it’s processing and it could take 45 days to complete
3. Get email a few days later saying dispute process complete and to go to equifax.com/CreditInvestigation with dispute # to see results
4. Follow link and find yourself at the same welcome screen from step 1… no problem look for place to login with dispute #… find none
5. Check FAQ and find link to check dispute status
6. Follow link and find yourself at the same welcome screen from step 1…
7. Try contact us link… which sends to back to main equifax site and requires login (need to protect those 800#s)
8. Login and check to see if credit report is update… nope
9. Find dispute status link on main site
10. Follow link and find yourself at the same welcome screen from step 1…
11. Waste time clicking on anything on the page that could possibly take you somewhere you can login
12. Find phone # on main site and call it
13. Select option 1 at prompt for disputes
14. Select option 1 at prompt that I have a dispute #
15. Listen to long description of how one can dispute items on credit report: online… mail… telephone… which then repeated.  Apparently the fact that I’m on the phone punching buttons for dispute is not enough for this system to believe that I want to continue  my dispute on the phone unless I listen to this long spiel about how the process could work so I know what button to push  (never mind the fact that possessing a dispute # means that I have already initiated the dispute process so this info is pretty useless at this point).
16. Get a real person.
17. Explain situation.
18. Be told I need to contact the dispute department!!!
19. Explain how many dispute choices I had to select to reach said person
20. Take new phone #
21. Select option 1 at prompt for disputes
22. Select option 1 at prompt that I have a dispute #
23. Enter dispute # at prompt
24. While waiting on hold the computer says this can all be checked online at investigate.equifax.com (a different URL) so check that while on hold: said web does not exist.
25. Get a real person
26. Give dispute # to real person
27. Hear that my dispute has been resolved in my favor!

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Bret Stephens had a brilliant piece last week in the Wall Street Journal.  Using an old bit from South Park, he provides the single best explanation for Obama’s policy initiatives I have seen in print.  It was good enough to grab in it’s entirety:

Sometimes it takes “South Park” to explain life’s deeper mysteries. Like the logic of the Obama administration’s policy proposals.

Consider the 1998 “Gnomes” episode — possibly surpassing Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” as the classic defense of capitalism — in which the children of South Park, Colo., get a lesson in how not to run an enterprise from mysterious little men who go about stealing undergarments from the unsuspecting and collecting them in a huge underground storehouse.

What’s the big idea? The gnomes explain:

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Sony finally realized that one of the Ps in PSP was for Portable.  And that those silly mini discs made the old PSP bigger and shorter on battery life.

The new $249 model due in October ditches the disks for 16GB of memory and shrinks to the size of a controler.

I think Sony may finally have an answer to the domination of the Game Boy series…

Back in December, Senator Bob Corker advocated letting GM go through bankruptcy as a way for the company to lose some of the millstones around it’s neck and emerge a stronger company that could stand on it’s own.  Democrat’s decried the suggestion as a terrible idea and “un-American”.

Two bailouts of GM and $20,000,000,000 later, Obama is taking GM to bankruptcy court as the “best solution”.  Wow, why didn’t we see this sooner? We could have saved all that money.

Unfortunately, Obama is not removing millstones so much realizing that the 3rd bailout in 6 months would probably hurt his approval numbers - so he’s calling this government intervention a “structured bankruptcy”. And worse still for the taxpayer, Obama is leading with his strong suit which is politics not profits:

Every decision the feds have made since December suggests that nonpolitical management will be impossible. First they replaced Mr. Wagoner — whom they are nonetheless still paying — with the more pliable Fritz Henderson as CEO and Kent Kresa as Chairman. The latter are good at playing Washington but unproven in making popular cars. Then Treasury bludgeoned the bond holders in both Chrysler and GM to take pennies on the dollar, which will not make creditors eager to lend to the companies in the future.

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